The Dead Man’s Switch

By
Adena Schutzberg

The Dead Man's Switch
There's a large piece of equipment in my neighbor's driveway this week.
It's a lift truck - a truck with a boom and a bucket for a worker to
stand in while attending to construction or painting high in the air.
It's there to support work on my house, up at the very top of the
pointy roof.

When the truck was delivered this week, I got the 10 minute training
experience.Most of the discussion had to do with the many safety
features.The actual operation, I'm told by the operator, is "just like
a toy backhoe." I was most impressed with the "dead man's
switch." It's a foot pedal in the bucket.If there's no foot in it,
the machine will not operate - drive on its four wheels or move the
bucket up and down.(Interestingly, to start the motor, you take your
foot out.) The idea is that should you become incapacitated and fall
down, the machine will stop, not keep doing what ever joy stick command
was last given.Being a bit wary of any sort of machine, I found that
idea sort of comforting.

As I was pondering the abuse of maps (I just read yet another review of
How to Lie with Maps by Mark Monmonier, the latest edition of which
came out in 1996) I wonder why we (the geospatial community) don't have
a dead man's switch, something to protect the "incapacitated" or novice
user from getting into too much trouble with maps.I realize it's not
exactly the same thing, but such a theoretical switch might protect
both the creator of the map (like the operator of the machine) and
those using the map (those near the machine).

On further thought, and after looking at recent news, maybe we do, at
least to some degree.Check out this very tragic story
about a mother who died when riding on the back of her son's bicycle.
The two were hit by a car in Middletown, New York.The son was injured.
There's a map, a very simple one, locating where the accident occurred.
It's interactive; you can scroll around and zoom in.It was no doubt a
simple process to add the map.I say that since three of the eight
local stories on the paper's homepage
included links to the main article plus a link to a map
as well.The Times Herald-Record (serving the New York's Hudson Valley
and Catskills, in the title bar of the website - thank you!), which ran
the story and map, is one of the smaller papers at the cutting edge of
online journalism.

This use of online map services is a safe way to introduce mapping to
places where it might not have been welcomed in the past due to
complexity, accuracy concerns and other biases.Why? Mostly because all
the user is doing is overlaying some simple data, in this case point
data, on an already created, nicely-rendered, relatively up-to-date (or
better said, up-to-date enough) base map.The "only" thing that can go
wrong is that the point is mis-located.In the case of a local paper,
the location is most likely input by someone who knows the area,
perhaps one who even visited the scene, and reviewed by someone else
who also knows the area, making such an error unlikely.

There's a safety for the reader of that article too.The locator map is
far larger than the photo accompanying the story, which shows emergency
personnel on the scene.That implies something we in geospatial take
for granted...that location matters.I'll suggest that is even more
important, if that's possible, in reporting local news.Further, the
map is clear, uncluttered, and, dare I suggest, familiar looking.It
has a "standard look" about it.That's safe, comforting, and
confidence-boosting for the reader.The only map that might be better,
in terms of reader confidence, is perhaps a National Geographic (NG)
map with the location marked.Considering the nature and scale of most
NG offerings, it might prove an inappropriate choice for locating this
event.

Whether the confidence in the creators of these maps or the users of
them is warranted is up for debate.I suggest that this confidence, the safety factor, the dead man's switch, is one more factor in the
widespread use of the Web mapping services across industries and
geographies.